The Saints 5th form students
who chose to write Physical Education as one of their subjects at the 2014 CSEC
examinations, were required to submit a School Based Assessment (SBA). The
students chose to host an inter house cricket tournament at the college’s outdoor
tarmac Brickdam. The group set the rules of the tournament and each student had
to take on the role of a tournament official. After the tournament was
completed, each student was required to submit a report about the tournament
and their role in organizing the tournament as their SBA.

The
tournament created a great deal of excitement and was well supported by the
entire student body. Congratulations to Omar Adams, Travis Belgrave, Shemuel
King, Delice Adonis, Hilton Chester, Kendra Warner, Deandrea Cummings and Alesa
Long on a job well done.

Below are the rules the tournament was
governed by and a summary of the results.

Rules
of the Tournament

oOpen
tournament (any student can play).

oThe
regular rules that are used for cricket will be applied.

oEach
team is allotted a maximum of six overs.

oEleven
players must be on a team and at least four must be girls

oAll
players must wear their house T-shirts.

oA
girl and boy MUST open the batting.

oAt
least two overs must be bowled by girls.

oIf
the ball is hit out of the school compound the player will be OUT.

oIf
someone bowls a wide the opposing team gets a run.

oIf
someone bowls a no ball the opposing team gets a free hit.

oTeam
members must be present at training activities which will be held on 17th
and 18th of February during lunch or after school.

The cliché about a picture being the descriptive equivalent of a thousand words remains relevant because like every cliché it conveys some essential truth. A stark picture of someone standing in the open air, arms outstretched in despair, besides a dead animal prostrate on the East Coast public road, conveys in an instant, without a single word, our widespread disregard in Guyana for the safety and life of animals, even the ones who serve us faithfully in some way. A photograph of a woman in a Georgetown hospital bed recovering from some horrific assault jolts us into immediate recognition of the stream of violence unleashed by men in our society upon helpless women. To see a grainy picture of the incomplete Amaila Falls Road reminds one, in a flash, of the array of irregularities and confusions that attended and still attend that project. On the recent front page of Stabroek News there is an Arian Browne photograph taken in City Hall showing our “two Town Clerks”, seated mere feet from each other, each trying to achieve territorial control, like two motorists on Regent Street, blocking traffic and refusing to move, both contending “is me parking spot.” In a moment, the picture crystallizes the demise of our city.

The spectacle captured in that photograph, and inevitably elaborated on video, is debilitating; it is pitiful. If not already on the internet, it is certain to end up there. And what a spectacle: persons shouting into microphones, or flinging documents around; voices trying to override voices; adult individuals wrestling over who has the microphone and therefore the highest volume; persons exploding in a cacophony of rage where everyone screams and accuses and not even a morsel of sense emerges.

There have been some shocking descents in the behaviours of our public servants in Guyana in times recent, but this exhibition of rancour last week, in our official edifice in Georgetown, is at or close to the bottom of the barrel. In the last 20 years, while Guyana’s economic conditions have improved, we have ironically gone significantly backward in the way we comport ourselves. In our public behaviours in recent times, we are now beginning to reach the level of yard fowls in our exchanges; that is essentially where we are; one only has to look at pictures of the City Hall confrontation to see the accuracy of the analogy. Indeed, even the fowls might object to the comparison because in their case a dominant rooster would charge in to restore order. In Guyana, no such intervention occurs and the rampage continues, in this case to the ludicrous extent of the police being called in to restore order. Our political behaviours now need to be monitored by the police?

How did we so descend? It is as if the words “shame” and “decorum” have been somehow erased from our consciousness. The picture is made even more painful when one considers that the individuals in the fray, in the camera’s focus and outside, are not in the also-ran or defective category; they are supposed to be among the best we have. They were selected that way to run the business of the nation. They are expected to be aware and committed. From within that group or externally, across the board, a leader, male or female, should be rising up in the middle of that maelstrom, banishing the press, and saying to the combatants, “Hold on, people. This is not deliberation; this is bedlam, and all that comes from bedlam is rubble. Surely we are not here to produce rubble.”

As bad as the Americans and the British are in their own strident political gridlocks, they have not reached the level of disgrace by their representatives that we seem to achieve in Guyana now virtually on a daily basis. If, as it appears to be, it is indeed politics behind our current intractable positions then we clearly have to find a completely new polity for Georgetown, if not the country. At a time when the Ministry of Tourism is launching an ambitious national entertainment event in the Guyana Festival (“the sound and the taste and the soul of Guyana”) in a concerted cultural push to bring visitors here, we have our leaders, in the same week, presenting this pathetic spectacle of the malfunctioning administration of our garbage-strewn capital. And although the constraints of political correctness may have prevented mention of it previously, one can identify the germ acting here in the differing ethnicity of the two representative warriors themselves.

I know without asking that the shame absent these days in the behaviours of many of our political leaders is felt strongly by Guyanese wherever we live. Confronted with the evident trauma in this photograph, all we can do is hang our heads. Explanations falter. Rationalizations become more lame. It is wearing to the spirit. As a Guyanese who is known for upholding Guyana, in a career of 48 years extolling our way of life (I am doing it again soon in Grenada and Toronto), I confess I am deeply ashamed, and I am angry at my own people for such a display where our public servants exhibit this fierce contempt for each other. I would have never dreamed it would come to this. One is reminded of the positive response to tribulation in the Bob Marley assertion, “Don’t worry ‘bout a ting; cause every little ting’s gonna be alright.” It is no stretch to say that if Bob were alive today and were to somehow witness that City Hall melee, he would simply shake his locks, turn on his heel, and say, “Mi cyan deal wid dat, bredrin.”

There are other examples of the dilemmas we face – the Local Elections delay; Financial Management legislation gridlock; the still unknown mysterious key investor in the Marriott; Public Procurement Commission; etc. – and they are formidable. But for some reason that single photograph of two pouting adults, anchored in separate chairs, competing for the same floor space, each adamantly refusing to budge, was like a voice shouting, “That’s what’s wrong with us.” That picture of two individuals, in the employ of the nation, blatantly dismissive of each other, is a striking reflection of the intransigence that is behind virtually every dilemma we are struggling with in this country. It has become rampant. Private funds should be generated to make billboard-size enlargements of that image and mount them around the city to demonstrate the chasm that has developed between the groupings of those who govern us. We should keep that Arian Browne photo; the next time we go abroad and we’re asked to explain some Guyana dilemma, we should simply point to that stark image and say, “That’s the answer.” Not in a thousand words, but in one photograph.

Made perfect thus in little space,God called thee to his long embrace,Before the mists of earth could throw,a shadow on thy robe snow.Guide from thy throne.....

Fr. Clement Barraud.

Significant Dates in the History of St.Stanislaus College

* May 1st,1866- Catholic Grammar School started* November 3rd 1866- School moved to Main Street premises* 1868or 69- School moved to Waterloo Street* 1871- School returned to Cathedral Presbytery* 1871- Boarders introduced* 1878- School temporarily closed* 1880- School re-opened* 1897- School moved to site of St. Mary's School, Brickdam* 1907- School moved to present Brickdam site* 1907- Name changed from'Catholic Grammar School' to " Saint Stanislaus College"* 1928- Weld Wing opened* 1942- College Association formed* 1952- Scannell Wing opened* 1966- College celebrates 100th Anniversary* 1972- Hopkinson Wing opened* 1974- Workshop built* 1975- College Farm opened* 1975- Collge becomes co-educational* 1976- College becomes a Govenment School* 1980- College ceases to be run by the Jesuits* 1991- College celebrates 125th anniversary* October 2004 - Board of Govern0rs appointed